Natasha Lomas

Natasha Lomas

Senior Reporter

Natasha is a senior reporter for TechCrunch, joining September 2012, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon.com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London.

The Latest from Natasha Lomas

Elon Musk takes Twitter out of the EU’s Disinformation Code of Practice

Twitter has withdrawn from the European Union’s Code of Practice on online disinformation, per the bloc’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton. In a tweet last night — which

Sam Altman’s big European tour

Fresh from telling US lawmakers he’s a fan of regulation and laws are needed to mitigate the risks around artificial intelligence — and, indeed, calling for an international regulatory bod

Google to work with Europe on stop-gap ‘AI Pact’

Google’s Sundar Pichai has agreed to work with lawmakers in Europe on what’s being referred to as an “AI Pact” — seemingly a stop-gap set of voluntary rules or standards

Meet the tiny, wireless sleep apnea diagnostic wearable headed for the US

U.K. medtech startup Acurable has gained FDA clearance for a novel wireless diagnostic device for remote detection of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). A formal launch into the U.S. market is slated to f

TikTok’s lead privacy regulator in Europe takes heat from MEPs

MEPs in the European Parliament had the opportunity of a rare in-person appearance by Ireland’s data protection commissioner, Helen Dixon, to criticize the bloc’s lead privacy regulator fo

Wellen taps OpenAI’s GPT for a chatbot that dishes advice on bone health

What are AI chatbots good for? Lovers of sci-fi novels may recall the “librarian,” a character in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 classic “Snow Crash” — not a person but an AI p

Meta ordered to suspend Facebook EU data flows as it’s hit with record €1.2BN privacy fine under GDPR

It’s finally happened: Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has been hit with a formal suspension order requiring it to stop exporting European Union user data to the U.S. for processin

UK court tosses class-action style health data misuse claim against Google DeepMind

Google has prevailed against another U.K. class-action style privacy lawsuit after a London court dismissed a lawsuit filed last year against the tech giant and its AI division, DeepMind, which had so

Climate risk startup Mitiga gets $14.4M to help businesses face an uncertain future

One pretty obvious aspect of the climate emergency which may have flown under your radar is that human-driven global heating is disrupting traditional approaches to risk modelling around natural disas

France’s privacy watchdog eyes protection against data scraping in AI action plan

France’s privacy watchdog, the CNIL, has published an action plan for artificial intelligence which gives a snapshot of where it will be focusing its attention, including on generative AI techno

Major decision on the legality of Facebook’s EU-US data transfers is due to be adopted today

Reminder: Today is the deadline for the Meta’s lead privacy regulator in Europe to adopt a final decision on a nearly decade-long complaint against Facebook’s transfers of personal data fr

Apple’s ATT faces competition probe in Italy

Apple is facing another antitrust investigation in Europe over privacy rules it applies to third-party apps running on its mobile platform which affect their ability to track iOS users in order to tar

EU lawmakers back transparency and safety rules for generative AI

In a series of votes in the European Parliament this morning MEPs have backed a raft of amendments to the bloc’s draft AI legislation — including agreeing a set of requirements for so call

Fairphone gets its audio groove on with repairable over-ear BT headphones

Dutch social enterprise Fairphone is best known for its mission to build ethical smartphones via a brand that promises fairer wages for supply chain workers and design choices that encourage consumers

Clearview fined again in France for failing to comply with privacy orders

Clearview AI, the U.S. startup that’s attracted notoriety in recent years for a massive privacy violation after it scraped selfies off the internet and used people’s data to build a facial

Europe’s CSAM scanning plan looks unlawful, per leaked legal advice

A legal opinion on a controversial European Union legislative plan set out last May, when the Commission proposed countering child sexual abuse online by applying obligations on platforms to scan for

MWC’s organizer slapped with GDPR fine over biometrics ID checks due diligence

Conferences and other in-person events rushing to impose facial recognition on attendees in Europe without doing the necessary due diligence over data protection risks beware: The organizers of the g

Europe’s top court clarifies GDPR compensation and data access rights

The European Union’s top court has handed down a couple of notable rulings today in the arena of data protection. One (Case C-300/21) deals with compensation for breaches of the bloc’s Gen

Meta’s ad business slapped with interim measures in France over suspected antitrust abuse

More regulatory woes for Meta: France’s competition watchdog has announced interim measures on the adtech giant — saying it suspects it of abusing a dominant position in the French market

UK’s antitrust watchdog announces initial review of generative AI

Well that was fast. The U.K.’s competition watchdog has announced an initial review of “AI foundational models”, such as the large language models (LLMs) which underpin OpenAI’
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